Friday. And calm I guess.

Hi everyone,

Here I am again.  It's Friday evening, and I'm at the Casa drafting this up.  I had to leave the office before 6pm tonight, as they warned us all the electricity in the building was to be shut off, so computers and all would be down.  So, I came back here and made up a meat free dinner (not because I'm going vegetarian; I just couldn't be stuffed going to the supermarket).  So I tried to create something out of mashed sweet potato, onion, garlic and fettucine pasta.  Epic fail.  The half that I didn't eat when combined with some diced chicken or pork and maybe some white wine, however, should be good and have a nice light flavour.

The day itself was constantly on the move.  We had a briefing from the managing partner this morning about the firm's future directions that went from 8-10am.  Not a great use of two hours, as all the interest was in M&A and the firm's commercial activities.  Being a worker's comp lawyer rather leaves you feeling like the hired help sometimes: the firm needs the contract we have with the relevant government agency to provide defence in these matters (it's the single biggest contract the Melbourne office has) but sometimes you get the feeling that workers comp - highly technical, highly specialised, intricate - is kind of viewed, at least in part, as a grubby, necessary, evil.

The day itself was productive.  Waded through a file and had two quick conferences with my boss.  I get on really well with him - he has small kids too and I think that helps in a way.

The blue devils were hassling me a bit today, medication notwithstanding, and I was going though a lot of up and down, but chiefly down.  Travelling OK right now, and as Joni and the girls are away and not on skype this weekend, I might go to the parentals' place for the weekend and give my brain a chance to reboot.

I spent this evening drafting up a letter for the Law Institute Journal.  The LIJ has a good policy on letters - they can really be short essays - and I'd like to respond to this editorial in the Herald Sun about a certain highly distinguished lawyer considering representing a fairly nasty rampage killer in a parole matter.  What worries me is that the sort of knee jerk reaction in the mass-circulation Herald Sun will one day combine with Australia's 46% functional illiteracy rate and restore something like the lettres de cachet.  I know that Kable's case should make that impossible, but I also don't think it can be ruled out, and I think that the legal profession should start the argument for restraint now.  Because if the issue isn't even discussed by semi-responsible voices, pretty soon the punters will listen to the irresponsible ones.  In a way, that's kind of how we got the One Nation Party leading the discussion of immigration.

OK, I guess that's enough for tonight.  See you tomorrow.

Oh, and one of my friends put this up on Facebook.  I thought it was great, so I'm sharing it here -